The Hallway launches Connect division expanding PR offering to social, search and programmatic
Independent agency The Hallway is restructuring its business into two divisions, expanding its two-year-old dedicated PR division to include social, programmatic media and search.
The agency has tapped former Host Sydney digital planning director Pascal Winkler to head the new offering, dubbed Connect, while The Hallway ECD and partner Simon Lee will head up its counterpart Create which will focus on creative effective ideas across all channels.
Winkler joins The Hallway to lead new ‘Connect’ offering
Explaining the restructure, The Hallway CEO Jules Hall told Mumbrella: “We originally bought PR and social in-house three years ago because a lot of the ideas we were generating lived beyond paid media.
“We bought that skill set in-house for two reasons. One, so we could have those skill sets influencing our idea generation and conception development and secondly, so we could control the application of those ideas to the best effect.
“Over the last three years the world’s become increasingly digital and importantly our focus on data has significantly increased. When we were looking at how we could best optimise the structure to go forward, the two core focuses of what we do are we come up with ideas and get them in front of people at the right times in the most effective ways, hence the two divisions Create & Connect.
Hall says The Hallway has been getting involved in the programmatic media space
“Within Connect we’ve rolled in PR and social and within that it’s become more and more about social and Pascal’s experience – he set up the social team at Host and helped set up the social team at One Green Bean – and his knowledge of digital and the strategy that sits behind it all is a valuable capability.”
Winkler worked at Host as the digital planning director for nearly seven years. Prior to Host he worked at NetX for nearly three and has also worked at J Walter Thompson.
“We’ve increasingly been getting involved in the programmatic media space and we see this as such a huge opportunity creatively. It’s really interesting for us as a creative agency as it gives us access to data that has traditionally has got stuck within the media agencies.
“It’s not that we want to compete with them to become media buying agencies, it’s because we want to get access to the data so we can optimise our creative faster to deliver more effective campaigns. ”
The restructure comes three and a half years after The Hallway launched its dedicated PR division under the leadership of Louise Pogmore who departed at the end of 2014 to join One Green Bean.
Pogmore’s position of head of PR was not replaced at the time, with Laura Barette leading the team. Barette departed the agency in April for Tomorrowland Group.
While Winkler’s appointment to lead the new offering could signal a departure from The Hallway’s effort to have a dedicated PR offering, Hall was adamant the agency is “in no way stepping away from PR”.
“It’s still an important part of our offering. But the world of PR is evolving. And so we are too – building on our learnings to create a more optimal model,” he told Mumbrella.
“When we brought PR inhouse our ambition was to create a more potent offering by combining our existing story telling capabilities with the story sharing capabilities that PR brought to the table,” Hall said.
“We never set out to create a standalone PR offering – even though we did win a few PR clients – but rather be in a position to create more impactful and shareable ideas that could stretch across the most appropriate channels, be that advertising, social or PR.
“Our theory was that by having everyone around one table, on one P&L from the outset would be a more likely outcome.”
The agency does still have traditional PR skills in the division in the form of PR & social media manager Natalie Craig who joined The Hallway in October last year from Connect PR Australia.
Craig joined The Hallway from Connect PR Australia
Hall said the agency does have traditional PR clients still, citing GSK and Horticultural Innovation, though he said that account was increasingly moving into the social space.
In terms of how the pitching side of the business works, Hall said the agency would be pitching across the offerings that ‘Connect’ encompasses.
“You rarely get a pitch that goes we want someone who can do advertising, PR and social. You normally get a pitch that goes ‘we’re looking for some good ads’ or ‘we need to do something in the PR and social space’ and then it is on-selling the other services,” Hall said.
Earlier this year full service agency 303 MullenLowe launched a PR division, appointing Maverick’s Melissa Grove as the agency’s first director of PR in April.
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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